I currently have a flaky heater. When it turns on sometimes, it doesn't actually light. However, it's intermittent, so the techs have had a very hard time figuring it out.

This is a problem because if the temperature is below the target temp, the furnace will try and light, and the thermostat will think it's asking for the heat to be on. If the heat's not on, the thermostat won't turn off and on again.

This is even more a problem because when we leave on trips, our cats are home alone. And even more a problem than that, because it gets below freezing where I live from time to time. And I love my kitties and don't want them to be catsicles.

This tool will run periodically, and if the nest is more than 3 degrees below the target temp, it will assume it's in an error state; shut it down, wait one minute, and attempt to turn it back on.

• load a locally stored target temp
• if the target temp == the current nest target temp
  • if the current temp more than 3 degrees less
    • set target temp to 2 degrees less than that
    • wait 1 minute
    • set the target temp back to target
    • send a push notification
• else, set the target temp

The requirements are listed in requirements.txt. The official pip version of nest_thermostat is not ideal, so I used a fork (actually a fork of a fork)

https://github.com/jkoelker/nest_thermostat

Beyond that, Just run the script. You need a config file (currently hardcoded to ~/.nestconfig) which is in YAML. target_temp should be in celsius, which is the nest's native mode. (It makes it saner to detect if it's set where we expected.)

---
user: user@example.com
password: somepass
target_temp: 19
pushover_api: 01234
pushover_user: 56789

Then run the script from a cron, say, every 30 minutes.